I noticed that people are/were still building
Mellotron replicas too! There's been a real resurgance of interest in the old keyboards. When the synth world went digital, all the idiosyncrasies (like 2-3 oscillators in unison, each drifting ever so slightly out of tune with each other - creating a huge, organic chorus-like effect) and real-time control capability went out the window. I think its only natural that people gravitated back.
I had a
DX-5 for a while. It would take me hours to program one sound on it. You miss having everything laid out right in front of you. It stinks having to dig thru menus on a little screen, adjusting hundreds of parameters with only one slider. Some of the new digital modeling synths have a full set of controls, so that helps. But they usually still sound clinical and anemic compared to the real thing.
There is a big craze around analog modular systems now (like the one in your second clip). Even beyond using them as "keyboard synthesizers", they are great in that you can process other instruments thru them. I want to put a small modular together someday for this purpose.
This is one of the modules that I'd really like to get a hold of -
Encore Frequency Shifter (there are some sound clips on that link). Theres also a youtube clip of one in action:
Obviously, it's capable of some crappy sounds, but in moderation it can yield incredible spatial effects to an otherwise one-dimentional-sounding source (like an analog synth or drum machine). I like that kind of stuff! There were only a handful of the original Moog/Bode Frequency Shifters built - so its great to see people recreating them. The internals are way too complex for me to attempt it.
I had ordered a bunch of chips from
PAIA when I was a kid, raided the surplus stores (and my Dad's parts bins), and built a small modular system using schematics from various books and Moog service manuals. It eventually got dismantled, but I held on to the chips and literature. The thing looked horrible - big pine frame, with masonite and flat aluminum siding scraps that I got from the neighbor as panels. Nice enclosures were (and are) expensive! It sounded like a synth, though - so I was happy!
Time permitting, I'd love to rebuild some of the modules, and put those chips to work again someday.
